A hospital information system (HIS), is a comprehensive, integrated information system that manages the administrative, financial and clinical functions of a hospital. This encompasses paper-based information processing as well as data processing machines.
It can be composed of one or a few software sub components with specialty-specific extensions and a large variety of sub-systems in medical specialties (e.g. Laboratory Information System, Radiology Information System).
A decent hospital information system goes as far as contributing to quality assurance activities such as assessing the quality of primary care, supporting clinical care evaluation studies, monitoring quality and indicators auditing concurrently the ongoing process of care using reminders or decision support techniques.
Some Functions of Hospital Information Systems
1. Manages all hospital functions including and not limited to administrative and clinical.
2. Helps improve operational efficiency, quality of care, and patient experience by providing staff with a single, customized view of healthcare information.
3. Supports paperless, integrated, seamless workflow to help increase information integrity, reduce errors and duplication of information entries, and optimize patient and report turnaround times
HIS Components
Following are the five major components or “modules” any hospital information system. However they can be as many as 38 such modules, each relating to a department in the hospital for eg: Lab module or LIS (Lab information System), Operation Theater or a Surgery module, a module for diagnostic imaging called as RIS/PACS, a housekeeping module, biomedical and maintenance so on and so forth.
Registration
The system captures and records patient demographics and visits at the point-of-care. Registration data will be displayed consistently and automatically on screens in the clinical system.
Order Entry and Results Reporting
All clinical orders such as investigations for lab and radiology and medications are sent to the serving departments. And once the lab and radiology have rendered the relevant service and uploaded the results of the investigations ordered for a patient the clinician can access them at his terminal. Electronic alerts will appear for orders duplication and errors and provide information to assist clinical decision-making. All test results in the patient’s ‘chart’ will be filed with alerts for abnormal results.
Clinical Documentation
This module provides on-line documentation of clinical encounters such as flowcharts and structured notes. Eventually this information will be shared across health care facilities within a chain of hospitals and can even be within all hospitals in a country.
Scheduling
Patient scheduling schedules patients for appointments with clinicians or for tests and procedures.
Patient Billing
All billable health services are processed in patient billing module. Examples: private rooms, investigations and medicines.